Articles published in April, 2026
I’ve come several thousand miles since Johannesburg and the bike is showing disturbing symptoms. I have already asked Lucas in Jo’burg for parts, and hope to get things fixed in Port Elizabeth, at Lionel’s shop.
Friday 19th April
Into Lionel’s first thing. Call Joe’s [in Johannesburg]. They have the parts. Just delivered [from England] but they won’t get to P.E [Port Elizabeth] today. Decide to re-sleeve damaged barrel and have the new parts sent on to Nelspruit. This means I have to go to Nelspruit before crossing into Swaziland, otherwise that whole “prohibited person” business again.
[Here’s a section of the only map I had at the time – one of the three maps by Michelin that covered the whole of Africa, so the scale is huge. You can just spot Nelspruit at the top, on the road from Jo’burg to Lourenço Marques. But I dipped down into Swaziland on my way to visit Anthony’s sister, “Small”]
Armed with letters for the pay desks I visit the Oceanarium and the Snake Park. Snakes in profusion. Strange demonstration by black snake warden in high leather gaiters, with cobra snapping at his heels. His voice soars and swoops without relevance to the words. Feel sorry for the puff adder which is pinioned ruthlessly for every demonstration. “Poison fangs. Nasty fangs. Sharp as a nail.” When he finishes with the snakes, he tosses them into the water where they squirm angrily.
Tropical house is full of beautiful birds. Most stunning are the toucans (Sulphur breasted) with beaks like pop art. The dolphins are delightful and impressive – weight up to 500 lbs, and when one leaps through a hoop three ladies in the front row are drenched by water. Dolphin whistles are very clear and convincing. Also two huge aquariums, and that particularly ogreish fish with thick white lips set in permanent snarl.
2pm. The barrel returns. I help to reassemble and don’t prime the pump: Result: No oil. It’s already too late to leave. I ask Yussuf, John and Lionel to have a drink with me. Wham! It hits me. We can’t drink together. The apartheid comes home to me. Yussuf invites me to his house, ten miles away in coloured estate called West End. Wife is very bright and pretty in scarlet boiler suit. She teaches in coloured school. Has niece in Brompton Hospital [in London]. Miss Bilby. Yussuf is very strict Muslim. No alcohol and normally doesn’t smoke. We have curry. No cutlery. Strong nostalgia for Sudan as we eat with our fingers. Then to hall with friends to play badminton. Yussuf is passionate about apartheid. “Dutchmen are stupid. Can be anything he wants because his skin is white.” Hoots his horn at white girls in protest. His resentment is lively and profound. Others dissolve their bitterness in religion. (cf: Priests Royal.)
[Royal Priesthood ministries still thrive in Durban, but then it was a way for Blacks to assert their dignity and individuality under a crushing regime.]
Saturday 20th
8.30 at Lionel’s again. (Have spent Rand 16.50 at Red Lion but good value by S.A. standards). Ready to leave by 12.30 with 30 litres of petrol – ten over the legal limit. Weather has become cold and cloudy. Air is frosty. Mean to sleep out but am unable to resist comfort of hotel at Komga when I find caravan park closed (costs one Rand anyway). Royal Hotel, Komga, is pleasant. Food is good. Owner is Alf Gunn and hairy-faced wife. They “traded” in the Transkei for twenty years before buying hotel.
Sunday 21st
Leave at 9 as Alf (all in white) leaves to play bowls. Big game in S.A.
Into the Transkei. Beautiful hill country, with huts everywhere, with compounds made of earth mounds planted with lovely flowering plant- flower is pointed and red, foliage deep green. Square plots of maize. Many horses, and riders reminding me of Judy’s grooms. [Judy, a friend in Cape Town] All Khosa [or Xhosa, tribal name]. Took pictures of African houses at Butterworth, and later of goats and village called Queque (with clicks). [I wish I could find those pictures.] Dried out sleeping bag, determined again to sleep out. Once more icy air deters me, and also those long hours of darkness. Into Balmoral Hotel at Kokstad. Girls ask me “Are you going to the Roof of Africa?” Say I’ve come from there – but they’re talking about a rally of some sort.
Talk to Xhosa from Cape Town, travelling as servant of an elderly Englishman, who represents a clothing firm. He is intelligent and articulate about black man’s problem – tells me about the Priest Royal. Started by white hippy in Cape Town after a film of something similar from the US. The top priest sits in a chair in a hall. Other sit on the ground after crossing themselves. They pray for equality and practice it among themselves. If a policeman comes in they pray furiously until he’s gone. There is a Priest Royal in Durban too, but they all call themselves Priests Royal. This fellow has widowed mother and six brothers. The eldest disappeared abroad and has not written since. This fellow works to send his young brothers to school. He still remembers it was a Friday in 1965 when his elder brother left a letter and walked out of the house. The letter said: “You will never see me again. But don’t worry. It’s alright.” His brother worries though whenever he hears a terrorist has been captured.
While riding through the Transkei I am made to look again for comparisons between these lives and more familiar ones in Europe. The white South African, it seems to me, builds his entire apologia on the persuasive assumption that the black people in their customs and origins are incompatible with white society and therefore must be kept apart until they have learned to want the same things as us, and are prepared to do the same things to get them. On this tacit presumption of a separate sub-species rests the entire apparatus of racial government.
The principal characteristics of the black man, as described by white employers, are: Laziness, stupidity, mechanical ineptitude, drunkenness, prolonged absenteeism, a tendency to be overcome by an inexplicable melancholy leading to total unreliability and dishonesty. He is also said to be loyal, humorous.
I don’t know how he would differ from an English labourer of, say, the early 19th Century, who went to work far from his wife and family. On Judy’s farm, it seemed to me that the longer serving grooms responded to her as any British farm worker of the old days and lived in much the same way.
It will be said, that’s all very well, but it’s only fifty years ago that they were painting up and slaughtering each other. Even now different tribes will tear into each other given a chance. Look at that recent affair at the mines, when all of the Basuto’s left.
Well, look at Scots, Irish Skinheads, football crowds, Mods & Rockers, motorway pileups, etc.
How different is life in a Transkei village from the generations before Cider with Rosie? Well, of course the cultural aura is quite different.
Balmoral Hotel, rambling hotel with many rooms on two floors, lounge with hot coal fire, big dining room with many pillars decorated with yellow flowers. Waiter in yellow livery. Young Xhosa posing beneath flowers laughs shyly across room. Food is tasteless but plentiful.
I’m still travelling through fairly civilised country – if you can call apartheid civilised – being handed on from friend to friend, and taking a day off in Hermanus, another delightful village on the South Coast. Just to remind you, these are raw notes – it would take a book to explain what they all mean.
Sunday 14th April
Idleness. Paperwork. Walk on beach with ‘Fred’ – the fat labrador, who waddles off in all directions. Braai in wheelbarrow. Talk to Angela about magazines. To Anthony about “things.” Get address of his family in Swaziland.
Monday 15th
Leave Hermanus at 8.30. Difficult. Felt uneasy about Tessa. Dirt road to Caledon. Very mindful of sprocket. Town before Swellendam noticed loss of power. At petrol station, saw smoke from exhausts. Oil down in tank by at least two litres. Take rockers off before realising that oil return may be faulty. Curse, and reassemble. Oil return seems OK. Pipes stop smoking after a while. Fill up with three litres and take a spare. If piston is seized, what can I do about it anyway? Will try to get to Port Elizabeth. After a short distance engine is swimming in oil. Tighten up rocker box nuts. Keep going. Arrive at Riversdale and go to Wimpy. Grey haired lively gent comes over. Tall, Germanic. In fact old German family of paper makers, originally from Württemberg. At time of Gutenberg – Caxton they went to London, but Thames water was too acid. So they moved to South Africa, where they heard of chalky water flowing from mountains.
He has always ridden bikes – owned 20. Rudge, F.N. (1000cc four in line). Now Honda 4 – 750cc. Says it’s great, in spite of height. Asked me to sleep in their caravan in garden. Very pleasant evening. Cars, bikes. SABC (radio). Chapman (got off with Princess Margaret on Royal tours and was recently eaten by a lion.) [No idea what that was about.]
Flying in war, aircraft carriers (rescued pilots had to buy a drink for entire ship’s company.) Local school with white staff working for coloured headmaster – “If you told them that in the so-called independent countries they’d never believe it. Hell!” His name is Lunnan – or Lonnon – or something, any corruption of London. House in Truta road, Riversdale. Nice strong, smiliing German wife, youthful. Two children at ‘varsity’ in Stellenbosch. Younger girl at school. House big, ramshackle – bathroom in do-it-yourself chaos. Bechstein grand [piano]. Sleep very deep. Breakfast, eggs, and off.
Tuesday 16th
Riversdale to Plettenburg Bay. Check oil en route. Round about full mark – seems quite steady. Plett at lunchtime. Eventually find Jim Williams’ house “Maňana” Put up tent in garden. Cook a mutton chop. Bay is very beautiful. Housing is all posh suburban. People renting for holidays. Mid-afternoon overcast. Decide to buy torch batteries. In town I give Don’s friend Andrew Roberts a ring. Am asked over for a drink. Motley group of middle aged and elderly people have been playing bowls. Big new “West Coast” style house – built from a magazine picture. Rough plastering wasn’t right, says large wife Sally, who poured me an enormous Scotch (and soda) in new glasses, bought for their capacity. Sky is now overcast, and begins to rain. Then heavy wind, lightning, thunder. Only the palsied general and his very composed wife stay to eat. I offer half-heartedly to leave for my tent, and receive half-hearted invitation to stay. The old boy is hard to talk to. Half senile? Half stewed? She (the wife) certainly gets very merry. Clenches her fists over her breasts (she’s 63 and very fat) and cries out her “Valkyrie” passion for her children – shouts defiance of Dr. Spock. [Very influential on childcare at the time.]
One of her daughters is living with John Freeman [prominent British journalist]. The other is Colin Legum’s daughter [Legum was another famous anti-apartheid journalist]. Was she previously married to Legum? She declares it’s a pity her daughters aren’t here – she’d soon have me married off. Something desolate about this great, pretentious space with these two drifting around in it, collapsing with age. The servant lady next morning says they don’t get up till ten, says it with humour and a tinge of contempt. House faces a marshy inlet – there are heron, etc. In morning a cormorant dries out its wings.
7 hp Lister engine produces three and a half Kw. Has an alternator for lights and a generator for batteries.
Wednesday 17th
Ride back to Williams’ house to pack up things. Try oil level and find to my astonishment that it’s back up to top of dipstick, i.e. two pints have found their way back into tank. Very mystifying. Ride on comfortably enough through very comfortable landscape (except where two rivers cut down through tableland – chopped up by erosion like a waffle. In ravines it’s semi-tropical , with baboons, blue gums, and thick vegetation).
Then, after Humansdorp, I stop and something goes rattling around in the crankcase. Dire forebodings. I curse again. Why always short of the mark. Foolish. Why not? But the rattle vanishes as soon as it comes. Whatever it is has settled in the sump. I ride on, holding my breath, and get to Lionel’s Motors [about a hundred miles to Port Elizabeth] without further symptoms – although the oil level has meanwhile dropped right down again. Obviously the pump is not getting it back.
I was racking my brains as I rode to explain the symptoms:
1. Overheating
2. Smoky exhausts when first starting
3. Loss of oil from oil tank
4. Sudden and short-lived loss of oil from rocker boxes, etc.
5. Magical reappearance of oil in tank
I calculated that the best explanation was a moveable blockage in the oil return pipe above the T-junction that feeds the rockers. Then, extra pressure to rockers. No return to tank. Oil forced into combustion chamber via valves. [This last is nonsense]. Anyway, there was no such blockage. The pump was simply not working fast enough – rubbish in it had damaged the seat.
At Lionels the chief workman drains the sump and finds bits of barrel broken off, and the bolt head from one of the flywheel securing bolts. WHY! Is this the way it’s going to go?
Lionel Smith wishes he could get more bikes [Triumphs]. Complains of lack of service from England. Says we’re a second-class nation – but all with good humour.
Walked that evening from Red Lion to Docks and back (3 or 4 miles) Endless, soulless Main Street of super modern, clean high buildings. Not a thing of interest. Life is all locked away. Sign of a divided and insecure society? Street life is a good sign – hence Cape Town street-parties. Streaking also (perhaps?) [There was a craze for people to dash naked through public events, called “streaking”.]
Thursday 18th
No parts from Jo’burg. Talk to Sam Gozzoff [who?] again. He knows nothing. Spend day cleaning up, blowing out oil feed, changing chain and refitting wheel. Greasing rear wheel bearings.
Yusuf is the Malay foreman. Tall and ugly, with long hair and red woolen hat. Two front teeth missing and a strange “sing-song” intonation which makes his English quite unintelligible. Each phrase or sentence is pitched at the same note. The syllables tumble out without emphasis so that the phrase is like a single word. He has a most pleasing personality and a direct, affable approach. He has several other “coloureds” working under him, all long-haired with pom-pom hats, and one white apprentice also. He obviously does his job well and is respected. The white lad, Gary, thought at one time that he should have inherited the job, but Lionel claims to have no colour prejudice and put Yusuf in. Gary seems reasonably satisfied. He says he’s a Christian and does a lot to help the poor. [Apartheid created three classes – white, coloured and black. Coloureds were Indians, Malays, anyone in between.]
There are two Africans also. They are not supposed to do anything but the simplest work – repairing punctures and so on. This is the law, which defines which class can do what work, but the law gets overlooked where possible. One African keeps up a low, humorous monologue directed at one or other of the younger coloured guys – “I don’t want to hear you talking about God. You are the Devil. How can a dirty fellow like you know about God? You are just the Devil.” – or – “You asking me for help? No good all this helping. A man doesn’t always ask for help. A man has to help himself. Why don’t you do your own helping.”
In the “White Males” [bathroom] is an African with his hands in the Castrol cleanser tin. Yussef says “Look at this black man. He is not supposed to be here. If they catch him they put him in –“and he holds up his wrists in imaginary handcuffs. The African is grinning broadly. “I’m not a black man,” he says. “Yes, you are, you are a black man.” “No, no, I’m not a black man” – and so on.
There’s a pleasant conspiracy to defeat irksome laws. Yussef says he is all right with someone like Mr Smith – but it’s a bad country for a coloured man. You don’t get the job your talent merits.”
More next week. Have a good one!
From Pretoria, Lucas arranged to have the bike and myself shipped to Johannesburg. I had an introduction to some friends of Tony Morgan: Don and “Trish” Ord. He was a successful industrialist and also a yachtsman. They invited me to stay with them while I tried to find a passage from Cape Town to Brazil. All the shipping lines were in disarray due to the “oil war ”caused by Nasser’s seizure of the Suez Canal.
The bike went to Jac’s Motorcycle Centre, 218 Market street, run by Sam Guzzoff. Given all the work that was done on the bike everywhere around the world I was not surprised to hear, when the journey was ended, that the Triumph people had been much more fearful for the bike’s survival than mine.
February 25th
Sam Guzzoff, sprightly, middle-aged, Jewish. In green safari jacket and trousers, Rides a Vincent. Takes cine film of birds. Big on amateur filming. Justin the mechanic, fuzz of blond hair, smokes Consulate. Complains a lot, but cheerfully.
Changed main bearings, con rod, pistons, valves, idler gear, oil seals, primary chain, sump filter. Rebored cylinders + 20. All pistons and rings + 20. Hepolite 7:1 compression.
[Eventually Don was able to locate a freighter that would be sailing to Rio de Janeiro from Lourenço Marques, in Moçambique, on April 27th. Meanwhile I explored.]
The Mine Dumps. Impressive slabs of bright orange-yellow, caked residue from the gold mine workings after the cyanide extraction process began – called slime. Previously process was alluvial and left natural sand. The sloping sides are deeply etched by rain rivulets, and in mass they certainly compare with the great pyramids. Great and costly efforts have been made for a decade to give grass a foothold on these spectacular monuments. Some are already green and fade into the landscape, while success with the others cannot be far off. The practical incentive is the dust that flies off them in the wind. For my part, I would greatly regret their disappearance. They are unique in shape and scale and in their astonishing colour. Like vast ingots they seem to be fitting monuments to Jo’burg’s early days. Perhaps my idea of varnishing them would be impractical but I wish an imaginative effort had been made to keep their original appearance. They are to Jo’burg what the Table Mountain is to Cape Town, rising up between buildings or seen as a surrealist back drop at the end of a street in Soweto.
[They are either gone now, or are going. I went on to visit a township exclusive to Africans, called Soweto. It became infamous two years later when police fired on students demonstrating.]
Soweto: regimented rows of brick cottages, single storey, tin-roofed. (like most houses – white or black). With dusty patches of ground, fenced in, blanketing the land. Nurseries are a delight. Children in coloured smocks, happy, orderly, non-destructive – fingering my nose. [Excited by its size – not that it’s all that big, but they see very few Europeans.]
Across the fence, grass ends. Arid patch with brick school and pupils, black girls in black tunics, white shirts, look drained of joy – still life. Houses have running cold water. Mostly electrified. Lights in high clusters, out of reach of stones. A man must have lived and worked in Jo’burg for 15 years to qualify for a house in Soweto. But authority still insists it’s temporary – thus resists any moves that might establish it (i.e. land ownership.} Most facilities provided by charity – swimming pools, nurseries, employment for disabled. Some nurseries built by state (but aided by private funds).
Football stadium. Children rushing with two fingers raised shouting “Up the Pirates”, a football team.
[Don was a keen sailor, like our mutual friend Tony Morgan. I went with him to Valdam.]
The club house. Brick boathouses cum holiday homes. Don’s all-night race in a Soling. Capsized twice. Huge artificial lake – one of so many spreading over Africa. Disturbing thought, but then remember how pleasant are the English home lands, yet how far from their original wild state – every acre worked a thousand years. Could Africa be like that?
Left Jo’burg on Thursday the 20th of March. i.e. 24 days with the Ords.
[I can’t explain why I made no notes during my three-day journey across the Transvaal. It is described in detail in the book, and I still remember it clearly. In Cape Town the Ords had arranged for me to be received by friends and I spent three weeks there.]
Arrive Cape Town, Saturday 23rd of March
Left Cape Town, Saturday 13th April
Spent morning packing. Sunlight on Prince Alfred. Letter to Jo still in typewriter on up-turned breeze block. Still hope, perversely, that she might call. Things spread on carpet. Small boys come to the porch and ask urgently for something in Afrikaans. I answer in English and they look quite disturbed. As they leave I realise they want some of the grape hanging over the door, which are already over-ripe. After a while, one comes back and fixes me with the one word “grape.” I pull down several branches and would have given him more but he decides not to push his luck and leaves with an armful. Eleanor comes by in “bakkie.” Offers to fetch green box from Hout Bay and gives me steak for lunch. While I’m packing, a blonde dolly with little boy in a Mini pulls up. She’s been admiring the Triumph. Do I want to sell it? She’d like to ride it herself.
I call London. Peter’s telegram has arrived saying he couldn’t get through – no reply to either number, which is ridiculous. Ask him to re-route the ticket money to Rio, at Thomas Cook’s or, failing that, to Barclay’s International, which used to be the London and South America Bank. Jo has not been back to him. Sad news. Peter is not going to US till Autumn. Will send carnet to L.M. [Laurenço Marques] c/o Augustratis
[My new friends in Cape Town decided to give themselves a holiday at a house in Hermanus, which is on my route East – about 100 miles on the coast.]
Finally, at 4pm I leave Cape Town – with a feeling for the place that must have been shared by many visitors. On the freeway to Somerset West pass through a pall of pine-scented smoke from a forest fire. Arrive in Hermanus. Louise is frying onions. Guy is asleep. Tessa, Heather, John, Angela, Anthony are still out. Dinner is smoked snoek with rice and salad. Delicious! Lots of Tassenburg [Wine]. Jokes, games, drunkenness.
I’ll be continuing my journey East to Laurenço Marques (now called Maputo) next week.
Leaving the hotel at Louis Trichardt I am hoping to get to Johannesburg, a good day’s ride away, but it’s not to be.
Thursday, February 21st
The unseen fate which has been working itself out inside my righthand cylinder since Alexandria, now manifests itself only 300 miles from Joburg where help is assured.
Just beyond Louis Trichardt the power suddenly falters, and an unmistakable sound of tinkling metal escapes the engine. The power picks up, but I stop to look. No idea what it is. Perhaps the chain has slipped over the sprockets. It’s very loose. Tighten the chain and drive on. Now power begins to fail rapidly until, after four miles, the bike simply stops, in first gear. There’s a strong smell of burning. Was it the clutch? It seems to have seized, because in neutral the bike won’t move.
[As I puzzle over the bike at the roadside, spectators start gathering round.]
Now I’m being really unimaginative, partly, I think, because of the supervision of two friendly Boers in the post office. I take the chain case off but everything is working just fine. Then it strikes me!! I forgot to readjust the rear brake. So, 3 hours later, I’m off again. But the noise in the engine is unmistakably unhealthy. Loud metallic hammering on every other stroke. Is it a push rod, a valve? I think of taking the top off right there. But the temptation to struggle on to Joburg is too great. At Pietersburg I stop again at a garage. Engine oil has vanished. I noticed it pouring out of the breather.
A big black garage proprietor says: “That’s a bad noise there, hey.”
Calls his foreman who identifies it straight away. “Sound’s like piston slap. The piston’s seized.”
“Can I go on with it?”
“As long as it’s not too far. You’ll use a lot of oil.”
It all adds up now, but I still don’t appreciate how serious the damage is because I don’t add the original breaking metal sound to the diagnosis. From Pietersburg to Naboumspruit is 34 miles. I stop to get oil but now the engine is too bad to start properly and I realise I must give up Joburg. It’s 4pm and too late to finish the job. I set up at the hotel and leave my stuff locked up in garage till morning.
Meet Keith Conway, a traveller in pharmaceuticals – small, neat man – could have been a grammar-school boy – bright enough (guess his age at 35). Came to South Africa [from England] ten years ago on contract. Stayed to form import business. Has house worth £34,000. Made up to 750 Rand [about the same in dollars] a month.
“I’d never have got there in England.”
Takes me to drive-in movie – “Jerusalem File” – Nicol Williamson stamping about making a fool of himself. Very low-grade experience. No sense of connection with the screen. Suburban anaemia. Convenience bleeds life grey.
A life of convenience, etc. Worth developing the idea.
Friday, February 22nd
Day spent replacing piston. It has shattered its skirt. Crankcase full of metal. Con-rod scarred. Sump filter in pieces – scavenge pipe seems off centre. Sleeve is ridged. Think of damage that might have been done in there. Now I’m grateful for that old re-conditioned piston. It ought to get me to Joburg. All goes well until I try to fit the gudgeon pin circlip. It drops neatly through the tappet hole into the crankcase. For the want of a circlip my Kingdom is lost. But the second flushing with oil brings it out miraculously through the sump. Next hang-up is refitting cylinder block. It won’t slide over the rings. At last I twig. Those rings from Cairo [I must have meant Alexandria] are oversize. Refit old rings and all’s well.
[There’s some confusion here. The cylinders must have been re-sleeved in Nairobi.]
Do it all up – without scavenge filter – and it starts and runs. Thank heavens I think to check on oil return. There’s nothing coming back. It’s 4pm again. Garage shuts at 6 for weekend. No petrol or oil in South Africa at weekends. Problem of getting into timing cover is too daunting. For one thing, I have to get auto-advance out – and I’ve tried and failed before.
Ring up Lucas and Tish Ord [Don and Tish Ord were friends of Tony Morgan in Johannesburg]. Lucas Managing Director is called Crane. Sounds like a thin version of Mike Pearson [in Nairobi]. They know all about me. Think I’ve missed my boat. Suggest I come in by train. Looks like a weekend wasted. I settle in at the ‘local pub.’.
This night I meet Mike Macmillan. Stout fellow with small, vicious-looking boy. The explanation comes quickly. His marriage is painful. He says he only maintains it for the kids. Has a daughter of seven he calls his doll. She likes his wife. The boy, aged 4, likes him, and he takes him (Ian) on his trips. Buys a bottle of wine at dinner.
Note: I want an auto-advance extraction tool, and a suitable drift for gudgeon pins.
Saturday, February 23rd
After a night’s rest my feeling about the bike changes, I decide to have a go. It proves much easier than I thought. With my “universal puller” I manage to get the auto-advance out. Timing cover comes off easily, and the scavenge pump has metal bits obstructing the ball vale – just as the lad at the Triumph factory said would happen. Put it together again and it works. (But I haven’t checked that the rocker feed pipe is clear. Will this be my nemesis?) Now my only problem is to get petrol – and oil if possible – before Monday.
[South Africa, at that time, was on a strict petrol rationing system during the week, and none at all on weekends. There was a universal 50 miles per hour speed limit.]
No company this evening. Restless, sleepless night, but not awful.
Sunday, February 24th
No breakfast till eight. Then boss’s son gives me petrol. Off I go, for a blissful twenty miles, then all hell lets loose. I stop to consider. Now the other pipe (from the new cylinder) is smoking, but there is awful rattling noise as well. Maybe just the piston again. So off with the pot again. Now I’m becoming quite adept. Takes me four hours including half an hour of sanding and scraping, but after all that the rattle continues. So it’s a bearing. I go gingerly into Nylstrom, six miles away, but Nick the Greek at the Park Café is very friendly and finds a fellow with a “bakkie” [Afrikaans for pick-up] to take me into Pretoria. – using my petrol.
First we visit his house – which he built himself, very much in the style and the finish that Bill [my stepfather] might achieve. He has also built up his own business as a butcher (after being a blacksmith) and suffered a terrible setback when his wife was crushed and near killed in another Datsun when wind blew it over on the highway. After three years she has recovered all but her left leg which is still bound up. She is most cheerful and content with her recovery, and both pleasantly mature people.
Pretoria makes a horrible impression. Mader’s Hotel on Kruger Street is like sleeping in a railway tunnel. No dinner or drinks after 8pm. I’m ten minutes too late and have to go out for fish and chips. But the lively waiter at the hotel has two beers for me, enough to get me dozy and soften the roughness.
Remember the shriveled couple. He in safari jacket and trousers. She in sleeveless blouse, skirt, black framed specs. He has a face mud-coloured by sun and alcohol, grey haired, stooping and slovenly. Beckons me over.
“She likes you,” he says, pointing at the woman. Then after a pause, “You can sleep with this woman tonight.”
I excuse myself. He wanders off. She says, “He makes my life a torment. He is still in love with his first wife. He’s my husband.”
Next week: On to Cape Town
